ed to him by his
recognition of the possibilities of beauty which life may hold.
Consciously to recognize that forces are operating which lie behind
the surface aspect of things is to open ourselves to the play of these
forces. With persons in whom intellect is dominant and the
controlling power, the primary need is to understand; and for such,
first to know is to be helped finally to feel. To comprehend that
there is a soul in every fact and that within material objects reside
meanings for the spirit, or beauty, is to be made more sensitive to
their influence. With the artist, however, the case is different. At the
moment of creation he is little conscious of the purport of the work
to which he sets his hand. He is not concerned, as we have been,
with the "why" of beauty; from the concrete directly to the concrete
is his progress. Life comes to him not as thought but as emotion. He
is moved by actual immediate contact with the world about him,--by
the sight of a landscape, by the mood of an hour or place, by the
power of some personality; it may be, too, a welter of recollected
sensations and impressions that plays upon his spirit. The resultant
emotion, not reasoned about but nevertheless directed to a definite
end, takes shape in external concrete forms which are works of art.
Just because he is so quick to feel the emotional value of life he is an
artist; and much of his power as an artist derives from the
concreteness of his emotion. The artist is the creative mind, creative
in this sense, that in the outward shows of things he feels their
inward and true relations, and by new combinations of material
elements he reembodies his feeling in forms whose message is
addressed to the spirit. The reason why Millet painted the "Sower"
was that he felt the beauty of this peasant figure interpreted as
significance and life. And it is this significance and life, in which we
are made to share, that his picture is designed to express.

Experience comes to us in fragments; the surface of the world
throws back to us but broken glimpses. In the perspective of a
lifetime the fragments flow together into order, and we dimly see the
purpose of our being here; in moments of illumination and deeper
insight a glimpse may disclose a sudden harmony, and the brief
segment of nature's circle becomes beautiful. For then is revealed
the shaping principle. Within the fact, behind the surface, are
apprehended the relations of which the fact an